Can Hillary Clinton finally close the ‘God gap’?

July 24, 2016

9 Min Read

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks as U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown listens at the campus of the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio, July 18, 2016. Courtesy of REUTERS/William Philpott

(RNS) As Democrats gather for the convention in Philadelphia that will formally nominate Hillary Clinton, the party faces an extraordinarily fortuitous set of circumstances: her general election opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump, finds himself leading a fractious party with too little cash on hand and sky-high negative ratings among key blocs of the electorate.

Women, Latinos and African-Americans are all down on the brash real estate mogul and reality TV star from New York, with Trump’s poll numbers near record lows in some categories.

Yet the most surprising development so far is that for the first time in many presidential election cycles Democrats have a chance to close or perhaps erase the so-called “God gap” — the dynamic that has seen regular worshippers pulling the lever for Republican candidates far more than they do for Democrats.

True, Trump has finally rallied the crucial white evangelical Christian base of the GOP to his side. But he still has outspoken detractors among prominent Christian conservatives and he is viewed with ambivalence and even deep suspicion by many Jewish and Muslim voters and members of other minority faiths.

And it’s not just smaller religious groups: a Pew Research Center survey released this month showed the overall “God gap” shrinking significantly, with registered voters who attend religious services at least weekly leaning to Trump by a 49-45 percent margin over Clinton. That is far smaller than the 55-40 percent advantage that Republican Mitt Romney held over President Obama at the same point in 2012.

With the key Catholic swing voter, Clinton actually leads Trump by a whopping 19-point margin among weekly Mass-goers, whereas Romney led Obama by 3 points among that same group — a 22-point shift.

And with Clinton’s selection of U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., as her running mate — a Jesuit-educated Catholic who served as a missionary in Honduras — the Democratic nominee, a lifelong Methodist who can speak fluently about her faith, has a chance to widen the lead over Trump.

The big question now, however, is whether the Clinton campaign is equipped to exploit that opening, or if it wants to.

The campaign only hired a full-time faith outreach director earlier this month, and in the days leading up to Monday’s (July 24) official opening of the Democratic National Convention staffers were still scrambling to fill out a lineup of faith-friendly speakers and events to try to showcase their outreach to the media and a huge television audience.

“Hillary Clinton, and even the Democratic National Committee, have not been very active in pursuing the faith-based vote, nowhere even like what (the Obama campaign) did in 2012, which was nowhere like it was in 2008,” said John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron and a leading expert in religion and politics. “So there really has been a decline in that” effort.

Moreover, Trump has been divorced twice and has a history of vulgar behavior and switching positions on foundational issues to many believers — like abortion rights — while often struggling during the campaign to present a convincing witness of his Christian faith.

“The bar is lower than it’s ever been for Democrats just to show they’re not antagonistic to people of faith,” said Michael Wear, an evangelical who worked on faith-based issues for the White House during Obama’s first term and then directed faith outreach for the 2012 re-election campaign.

Wear, who writes on faith and politics and runs a consulting firm, will be on one of several “faith council” panels that the convention is hosting in Philadelphia.

U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign event at the Culinary Academy Training Center in North Las Vegas, Nev., on July 19, 2016. Courtesy of REUTERS/David Becker

“Hillary doesn’t have to back down on principle one bit,” said Wear. “She never has. The question is whether they choose to look at the faith community as a convenient foil or whether they are going to live up to the message of unity and togetherness of the campaign and actually engage in faith outreach.”

In a sense, it’s as if the Clinton campaign is making the old mistake of fighting the last war: Democrats have been so unsuccessful at attracting pew-sitters to the polls that many party officials and strategists have simply thrown in the towel and decided it’s not worth the effort.

There are certainly strong arguments for not bothering too much with faith-based voters: As the electorate, like U.S. society, has become increasingly polarized, campaigns have become increasingly focused on turning out the base rather than trying to reach out to a shrinking center of persuadable voters.

For Trump and the Republicans that means trying to attract conservative Christians. For Clinton and the Democrats that has meant rallying the more secular voters and, in the process, often alienating faith-based voters.

Also, the Pew survey showed that even if Clinton isn’t generating as much enthusiasm among religiously unaffiliated voters as Obama did in 2012, she is winning that demographic handily.

More importantly, the number of so-called “nones” has risen sharply, from 14 percent of the electorate in 2008 to 21 percent this year — a larger bloc than Catholics (20 percent), white evangelicals (20 percent), white mainline Protestants (19 percent) or any other religious group. And they make up more than one-quarter of the Democratic base.

But many experts as well as some Clinton supporters say this shouldn’t be an “either/or” calculus. For one thing, voters who identify by religious labels or practice, when taken together, still far outnumber purely secular voters. Alienating them is probably not wise, nor is it a path to expanding the field of play.

“My view is that it’s worthwhile trying to maximize the vote overall,” said Green. “Going into the general election, that’s where there can be some real advantage” for Clinton, he said, especially if the contest is as close as expected. “In that mix, a faith-based appeal could be the thing that makes a difference.”

The campaign also seems to recognize the possibilities of appealing to the faith-based bloc.

Selecting Kaine as the vice-presidential nominee sent an important signal, and Clinton this month also hired John McCarthy, a graduate of Catholic University of America who worked on Catholic outreach for the 2012 Obama campaign, to coordinate faith efforts for the campaign.

The campaign in January had already hired a Jewish outreach director and this month they also added Zina Pierre to fill a new slot as African-American faith director. More such hires are expected soon, said Xochitl Hinojosa, a spokeswoman for the campaign. “We are growing our team,” she said.

The question is whether, having arrived relatively late to the party, these faith outreach staffers will have sufficient sway and resources to make that message a priority. McCarthy said that won’t be a problem because faith is so important to Clinton herself and her message of unity is at heart a religious one.

“I would say that from Day One, because of who this candidate is,” outreach to people of faith “is something that has been at the very core of this campaign,” McCarthy said in an interview. “It’s going to be a lot of work going forward. But we have a great candidate who this means a lot to.”

Another serious challenge, however, is that Clinton has come out in favor of reversing the longstanding policy to bar federal funds from paying for abortions. The so-called Hyde amendment has been routinely attached to annual appropriations bills since 1976, a rare instance of ongoing bipartisan agreement in Washington.

The Democratic draft platform this year went so far as to incorporate a pledge to overturn the Hyde amendment, a single sentence that has infuriated Democrats who oppose abortion and those who, if they are pro-choice, want to at least allow room for other Democrats who would limit abortion rights or press for policies that seek to reduce abortions. “Political malpractice,” fumed a Protestant who has consulted with the party on faith outreach and asked not to be named.

Many of the angry Democrats are in fact the very Catholic voters and legislators that Clinton needs to woo in order to win in November. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia called the platform language “crazy” and Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota also objected. Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, one of the hosts of the convention, wrote a letter to the platform committee calling for a change.

And one group, Democrats for Life, has put up billboards in Philadelphia proclaiming that “1 in 3 Democrats are pro-life” and that the party needs to be a “big tent” that welcomes a diversity of views and policy approaches.

Whether anything will come of the efforts to drop or alter the anti-Hyde language this week is unclear, but the issue certainly complicates the campaign’s faith outreach.

In the end, the party’s best hope, and best weapon, may be Clinton herself – if she decides to open up.

Clinton has said she doesn’t like to “advertise” her faith and she hasn’t spoken much about religion during the campaign. One notable exception came in January during a town hall event ahead of the Iowa caucuses when Clinton delivered an extended answer about how her faith informs her progressive views.

She also highlighted her faith a month later while campaigning in South Carolina where she wanted to attract African-American Christians who identify with the connection between faith and politics.

Will those episodes be harbingers of a general election message to convince voters that the GOP is not “God’s Own Party”?

“At any given moment you could imagine that [Clinton] could start talking about her faith,” said McCarthy. “I think between now and November you’re going to hear not only her talking a lot about her faith but you’re going to hear about her personal motivations for doing these things.”

About the author

David Gibson

David Gibson is a national reporter for RNS and an award-winning religion journalist, author and filmmaker. He has written several books on Catholic topics. His latest book is on biblical artifacts: "Finding Jesus: Faith. Fact. Forgery," which was also the basis of a popular CNN series.

56 Comments

Pandering. Our Constitution prohibited religious tests for public office but apparently it matters a great deal to the voting public. I don’t remember it being this critical in my lifetime – with the exception of concerns over JFK’s Catholicism. Even the prospect of a Mormon president didn’t raise much controversy. It has become a farce with Trump pretending religiousness and a fake ‘born again’ moment. I will not see an atheist (publicly, not closeted) president in my lifetime for sure and probably not in my son’s.

Maybe not an openly atheist president running around, you’re right about that.

But there’s no doubt about it : Obama, Hillary and Kaine are 200 PERCENT ATHEISTS in the way they run government. They viciously pursue Absolure Zero religious liberties for Christians unless it involves their own liberal-approved causes.

Hillary is a more zealous “practical atheist” than anybody except Bernie Sanders. You gonna love her!!!

Ive read the transcript of Trump’s acceptance speech (I refuse to watch conventions) and he made absolutely no mention of God at all. He did mention that evangelicals had been good to him, but that was it. That’s fine with me, but if that had been Hillary, the God Squad radicals would STILL be screaming about it.

Sell your soul for the Supreme Court… This is all about the Supreme Court.
If they think they can keep Mr. Trump on a leash…. I’ve got some swamp land for sale.
Any other presidential election they would let it go, let Hillary have it.

We have gotten to the point that crooked people are more admired in this country than a person with MORALS? If the democrats win the NH which I doubt, that will be the end of this beautiful land. Thank You.

And that’s where you lose all credibility and reveal yourself to be full of BS. Speaking as a Jewish person, I can assure you that Christians have vast privileges in nearly all aspects of American society in deference to their religious liberties. Try being a minority religion sometime and then let me know what you think.

What? Constitutional religious liberty is written in the Bill Of Rights. The BOR is neither Jewish nor Christian nor Muslim nor Atheist, it’s supposed to apply to all Americans.
But Obama and Hillary have de facto repealed it for you as well as for me, equally.

If YOU, as a Jew, refuse to bow and kowtow to the Gay Goliath when you’re doing your wedding cakes or wedding floral arrangements or bed-&-breakfast receptions, YOU will get exactly the same Unconscionable Inexcusable Liberal Fascism as what us Christians already received from crooked Obama.

“YOU will get exactly the same Unconscionable Inexcusable Liberal Fascism as what us Christians already received from crooked Obama.”

Which happens to be the same thing as people who refuse to bow and kowtow to the anti-white racist hegemony and serve YOU in any shop or government agency. God himself would never want a white person to demean himself to bow and scrape to a person of color and sell them goods and services.

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

That you would deny the same civil liberties to others that you take for granted?

Yeah you are full of it! Your religious belief doesn’t entitle you to attack other people. People who discriminate deserve all the nasty results that befall them. People who support such discriminatory behavior are lower than dirt.

It mostly has to do with racism. If you are white and belong to the Republican party you will be accepted. If you are not you most likely will have to wait and wait, but you will never be totally accepted.

The “God gap” is nonsense. Trump has no religion but money and narcissism. Pence is an ex-Cath turned fundamentalist who disdains religious liberty. Hillary is a Methodist who is far more “Christian” than Trump or Pence. Kaine is a Catholic who respects women’s rights of Conscience on abortion an values public schools. Hillary opposes the diversion of public funds to church-run schools through vouchers. Voters who really respect religious liberty and our constitutional heritage of church-state separation will vote for Hillary and Kaine. — Edd Doerr

Your post is fiction for two reasons:
1. The US is not nor ever has been a Christian nstion.

2. Israel has a significant Christian population of citizens. It is the only ME country where Christians enjoy freedom and equal rights. Religious background is only relevant to whether military service is mandatory or not.

I find it rather comical that Michael Wear feels Hilliary doesn’t have to back down on principle! When did she start operating on principle in this campaign?! And RNS needn’t brag about Trump’s high negatives; Hilliary’s are almost as high! They’re even higher in the “honesty and trustworthiness” arena.

If Jesus came back today or tomorrow, I don’t think he would endorse either candidate or party. Both have sought to co-opt sincere believers into their claim of some half-baked, half-truth spirituality. And both have made their individual deals with the Devil in exchange for power and influence.

Hilliary opposes school choice for another reason, and it’s not “diversion of public funds to church run schools”–a MAJOR fallacy! Parents paying to send their children to parochial schools, still pay every dollar in property tax, which goes to support public schools. C’mon, at let’s be accurate and honest!

Wrong. Hillary opposes diversion of public funds to private (mostly church-run) schools because she is aware that Americans are strongly opposed to such misuse of public funds. How do we know? Because between 1966 and 2014 there have been 28 state referenda from coast to coast in which vouchers or theie analogs have been rejected by an average of 2 to 1. (See my article “The Great School Voucher Fraud” at arlinc.org.) Further, the 2015 Gallup education poll showed opposition at 57% to 31%,. Hillary is simply aware of public opinion on this issue. She also respects our constitutional principle of separation of church and state, which is disdained by most Republican politicians.

People are quite free to send their kids to special interest church-run private schools, but they should not expect the taxpayers to pick up the tab.

These comments are (edited) of you, Spuddie. You can do better, honestly. Gay Marriage is a choice, an event, a choice to participate in or not participate.
Gay marriage is NOT the same as white or black skin which is genetic.

The Bill of Rights mean that Christians-Jews-Muslims-Atheists should not be forced by government to participate in EVENTS that clearly oppose their chosen religion.

These comments are (edited) of you, Spuddie. You can do better, honestly. Gay Marriage is a choice, an event, a choice to participate in or not participate.
Gay marriage is NOT the same as white or black skin which is genetic.

The Bill of Rights mean that Christians-Jews-Muslims-Atheists should not be forced by government to participate in EVENTS that clearly oppose their chosen religion.

It is a sad State we are in, that a candidate’s perceived allegiance to a thousands-of-years-old god mythology such as the Christian one – a mythology with no recent evidence whatsoever to support it (among many other problems with it) – has any bearing on what should be a rational voting choice other than to simply disqualify such a candidate given that candidate’s demonstrated inability to make informed, rational decisions.

You can do better as a human being. Bigotry of another type is still bigotry. Just because the target is different, it doesn’t make the behavior any more acceptable.

What you call, “forced by government to participate” is more honestly known as selling goods and services in open commerce and allowing people access to government services as is three right. You can do better than to use such a nonsense euphemism.

The bill of rights does not grant people the right to attack others in the name of their religion. You have no concept of what rights are. Your excuses for discrimination are repugnant and dishonest.

You use the same rhetoric as racists did and advocate the same actions which were done on people like you.

Si, bien se todos los asuntos acerca del campo de educaccon publico–servia unos anos come instructor y principal. Yes, I well know the ins and outs and politics of public education: I served a few years as a teacher and principal. You mounted an eloquent defense of the teachers unions and their support of mediocre teachers at the expense of vulnerable middle-class students and families with high expectations.

I was a debate coach once: my sophmore debate students mounted every kind of extreme argument by stringing together lots of powerful assertions. Then I taught them the second tool of advocacy: one has to SUPPORT those assertions with research and expert opinion, and overcome their opponents’ weak, unsupported counter-positions. So here goes:. The Catholic and private schools outstrip all but the wealthiest public schools. Even parents with no college who home-school, have kids ranking in the 70th percentile and above, and their kids are accepted to college in bigger numbers than those graduating from public schools–many of whom have to take remedial, no-credit classes their Freshman year, before mounting regular college work. And let’s not forget all these nice folks are still paying axes for inferior schools for their neighbors.

I am a former teacher (history, government, Spanish) and have had 5 other teaches in my family. I do not support mediocre teachers but do support the teachers unions without which the teaching profession would be seriously damaged.

As for private school “superiority”, you seem woefully ignorant of the work of the Lubienskis and others on the subject. I have published widely on this and suggest that you read the books of Diane Ravitch, Mercedes Schneider, and Gene Glass — for starters.

According to the timesofisrael, Christians can be married by Christian clergy. According to the haaretz article interfaith marriages are on the rise. Neither article stands for the premise you claimed. So either you have a veracity problem or a reading comprehension problem.

As far as I know, Hillary is a Christian of the United Methodist denomination and her faith plays an important role in her life. That’s what she says and I haven’t seen anything in her behavior that contradicts that. Trump is not at all religious, and lies about it prolifically.

I don’t need a politician to believe everything I believe or disbelieve, but I do need her to respect my right to believe as I do without coercion. Hillary does that.

Republicans have never been God’s Own Party, but they have shamelessly manipulated religious voters, particularly right wing evangelicals. Republicans have made big claims and promises in the last several decades, and never followed through. They have fear-mongered relentlessly, and continue to do so now. In my opinion, as more and more evangelicals become aware of how they’ve been used and especially, misused by the Republicans, that dominance has diminished. It may be near the tipping point now. I certainly hope so.

I went to a very small private (not church-run) high school housed in an old building full of asbestos and mold problems so bad that I coughed all winter long. Our teachers were a constantly-shifting assortment of graduate students, former at-home moms re-entering the workforce, and a handful of wealthy individuals who taught as a hobby. Our computer lab consisted of a few donated and outdated Apples. Our gym had a carpet of astroturf, not wood floors. Athletics were a joke, facilities were a joke. And yet almost every graduate went on to excellent universities and we boasted scores of National Merit scholars and future professionals. What made the difference was not teachers or money but that we had parents who valued education and excellence and accepted no excuses for failure.

First of all, Inis didn’t say anything about Israel. Why are you bringing it up?
Second, your claims are false. Christians are allowed to become citizens of Israel and to get married. There are Christian members of Parliament and of the Israel Defense Forces. What you’re really talking about is that there is no such thing as civil marriage in Israel. If the government doesn’t recognize certain denominations, then members of that denomination cannot get married. You can’t go to city hall and get married in Israel, you have to go to a house of worship.

As a Jew she probably wouldn’t. Not because Jews are incapable of refusing service to people, but it doesn’t seem to be happening with gay weddings the way it’s happening with Christian bakers, photographers, florists etc. A few years ago, when New York legalized gay marriage, there was an article about how the mostly Orthodox Jewish-run Diamond District of NYC was going to feel about gay couples coming in to buy rings. To a person they said they disagreed with gay marriage, but they were running a business and weren’t interested in people’s personal lives. That’s what comes from being a member of a minority religion — you don’t have the Christian privilege that you think gives you some right to discriminate. This is what Inis was getting at.

She never “called black people ‘superpredators.'” She called certain violent criminal youths super-predators in support for a 1994 bill, also supported by Bernie Sanders, that many criticized then and now for disproportionately affecting African Americans.

Because you thought it would somehow convince me you’re right that an elderly socialist thought it was a good idea. The only reason you would have thought that “context” would do anything to convince me is because of a blanket assumption that I was a person who liked Bernie Sanders.

Otherwise it would be just as relevant as naming ANY politician who supported it. You picked THAT ONE because you like to make assumptions!! 😛

Let me explain to you how Disqus works. Everyone can see my comment back to you, not just you. Everyone can upvote it, reply to it, or even flag it as inappropriate or block me because of it. You are not the only person I’m writing for and I could not care less who you support. You seem to have this bizarre hard-on for me and everyone else here who dares disagree with your “wisdom.” I assure you the feeling is not mutual.
But beyond that, it’s relevant because it demonstrates Sanders’s hypocrisy. The only reason you know about that remark is because Sanders pushed it as news. His delegates were still talking about it at the convention.

Let me explain further how Discus works. In order to direct a comment at a certain person you click the “Reply” button below their comment. If directing your comment at a wider audience and not specifically targeting a person, you don’t reply to them. Take your general “targeted at everyone” comments elsewhere.

For example, I would not reply to you and start ranting about, say, Jeb Bush or some other politician irrelevant to your post because you did not bring Bush up, nor indicate any support for the man. It would not be relevant.

Most people keep general comments to the, well, general comments, not in reply to other unrelated comments.

“it’s relevant because it demonstrates Sanders’s hypocrisy”

On a comment thread that has nothing to do with Sanders, on a web article that has nothing to do with Sanders. I won’t deny the doddering old man is a hypocrite, but that’s hardly relevant to the situation.

“The only reason you know about that remark is because Sanders pushed it as news.”

XD No. Not everyone is so isolated in little bubbles as you are. The first /I/ heard of it (this election cycle, not counting before that) was on another website where a third-party affiliated commenter brought it up when Hillary began her outreach to the African American community as an example of her hypocrisy in supporting policies that damage the communities she claims to represent.

You’re projecting.

Just because YOU live in a bubble where the only place you heard about it was out of the mouth of Sanders doesn’t mean everyone shares your limited worldview.